Slinky

I was running out of post-it notes. This was a serious problem. After all, I depend on those handy three-by-three inch squares to catch ideas, work up plans, and track progress. So I placed an order for 18 pads of the yellow 3M variety along with some other supplies.

And then they arrived. But I discovered I’d ordered the “pop-up” variety. I despise these.

You know the type: Made for a dispenser, these packs of exasperation are connected top to bottom to top to bottom. Perfectly designed to confuse and frustrate anyone holding the little yellow pad in her hand. Perfectly designed to write upside down at least fifty percent of the time. Perfectly designed to require a constant micro-effort to determine which side is up before using the darn thing.

This is not what I wanted. But it is what I had now. And while annoying, they are perfectly serviceable, being actually sticky and all. Besides it is not in my upbringing to waste them. It is baked into my DNA from my immigrant great-grandparents who raised families in the Great Depression that we do not waste. Hence I reconstitute bits of leftover dinners to make perfectly good lunches. I smooth out gift bags for future celebrations. I save plastic containers to freeze food. I take the remaining soap and shampoo from hotels. I wouldn’t sleep well if I didn’t do these things.

So I’m stuck with the accordion pleated post-its.

Now I’m standing with a sharpie and this handful of disappointment in front of three flip chart sheets that serve as a make-shift white board in my dining room. I’m ready to capture my reflections on the pandemic, the changing situation, the struggles of people and organizations we serve, and ideas for the help we can provide.

I absently stretch the sticky notes out into a long chain and back into my hand palm. The little sheets flutter softly as they unfurl and return, unfurl and return to a tidy square. The motion and the sound are pleasing as my mind ponders global challenges, unfurling ideas, returning to what we face.

Then their connected motion snags a tactile memory of a summer day in 1973.

The slinky is a gift, and we dash into the backyard to play with this marvel. We send it crawling down the porch steps one after the other. Then off the picnic table it goes! We giggle as it “walks” off my cousin’s head. Stretching but always returning to itself, holding shape dependably just as designed, until, that moment when…well you know the moment…when we get excited, curious, too silly, and swings it a little, then swing it around my cousin’s arm and then back. Then with a little more gusto, wrapping it around a tree trunk and back. Then we catapult it at the lawn chair where coils grab and tangle and hang askew. Its extension-retraction magic halts. We regather it, trying to return the slinky to shape but it’s bent so now it bulges, imperfect never to return to symmetry. It won’t crawl anymore. It only spills itself in a messy pile when released.

We look at each other, simultaneously worried about being scolded, disappointed that it no longer works, and ashamed that we’d ruined the thing by our impulsive antics. But that’s only for a beat or two. And then…

A new game erupts. The slinky is stretched to its full length, then, “Let go!” and it rebounds wildly. Laughter erupts. Then we wrap each other in it. We hold ends and shake it making sonic-like waves. We drag it along snake in the grass. We explore the limits of this new thing, new in its brokenness. New in its ruin. New in its potential. Not the thing we were given but a new thing. We happily make the best of that “ruined” thing all that sunny afternoon.

Studies have shown that children naturally prototype when given a challenge. They are by nature more open-minded learners, ask more questions, and benefit from being more comfortable making mistakes that offer new ideas. Yes, these capture the essence of my ruined slinky memories!

My mind wanders back to the present moment, still alone in my house after ten weeks of pandemic isolation, holding in my hands my slinky of post-it notes, stretching them apart and bringing them together again, now smiling.

I find the top sticky, and another and another, rapidly writing and placing them on the wall, notes with observations, sensations, questions about what is happening, notes with inspiration for living into this time. Reflecting on the deep human needs we’ve heard in virtual gatherings over the last 10 weeks, notes on the grief and hopes, the fear and kindness, the overwhelm and potential.

Ideas flow, and a slowly rising confidence that we can take this irreparable brokenness, bent out of shape, ruined and never going back to the same shape again, we can take what we have and create something new.